


The Calm Before The Storm

by WorryinglyInnocent



Series: Homeward Bound [9]
Category: Lost
Genre: Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Oceanic Six Claire, season 4, season 5, season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 13:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14081802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Continuing theHomeward Boundseries, a canon divergence in which Claire left the island in the season four finale and became part of the Oceanic Six, raising Aaron herself.Claire and Sun are finally reunited with the rest of their group when Hurley and the others return to the present day, and Claire tries to work out precisely why they have been returned to the island.





	The Calm Before The Storm

Once they’re back on the beach, things seem to settle down a little. Ilana, the woman from the Ajira flight, is anxious and jumpy. Jacob’s death has evidently affected her more than she wants to let on, but Claire and Sun don’t feel any fear of her. She said that she’s there to protect them after all, and however strange their circumstances might be, they trust her enough not to harm them. She’s had plenty of opportunities to.

Claire stands by the water’s edge, feeling the waves lapping against her toes and looking down at Charlie’s ring. It’s just a waiting game now, until the ones who are stuck in the past are returned to them and they can all go home. There are still far too many unanswered questions and Claire is still unsure as to why they have had to come back here in the first place, but really, she doesn’t care all that much. Just as long as she gets back to the outside world at the end of it all. She’s undergone so much upheaval in the last couple of days with so many fears and revelations, that this is the first real time that she’s had to breathe and focus.

Sun comes up alongside her. Richard and Ilana are arguing about something, Claire can only make out the faint intonation of their voices behind her, no words. Ben appears to be having some kind of personal crisis, and Frank is focussing on their day-to-day survival and seems to be the sanest one among them.

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait for them to come back?” Sun asks.

Claire shrugs. Whatever it is that’s going to catapult them out of the past and into the present, it’s going to be something spectacular. She remembers when they first found the Swan station, and what everyone had said about the strange ‘Incident’ that had caused it to change its function.

“What if we caused the thing that brought us here in the first place?” she asks Sun.

“Sorry?”

“Desmond said that he crashed our plane when he didn’t enter the computer code in the Swan in time. The computer code had to be entered because of an ‘Incident’ several years ago. What if we created the Incident? What if that’s what’s going to bring the others back from the past?”

Sun is silent for a moment, then shrugs.

“When it comes to this island, I really wouldn’t put anything past it. I suppose all we can do is wait and hope that they’re all ok when they come back.”

It must be harder for Sun, having come for the express purpose of finding Jin and rescuing him, and now being so close, but so far away. She closes her eyes, turning her face up to the sunlight.

“Jin was a fisherman,” she said. “He always had a connection with the sea. Sometimes when I stand here at the water’s edge, I can imagine him standing in the same place thirty years ago, and it almost feels like he’s next to me.”

Claire reaches across and squeezes Sun’s hand, then leaves her friend alone with her thoughts, heading back up the beach towards their camp.

“What’s happening?” she asks Frank, nodding towards Ilana and Richard.

“Damned if I know,” Frank mutters. “They’ve been talking about dynamite for the last ten minutes but if they think they’re going anywhere near my plane with it then they’ve got another thought coming. I have every intention of getting off this crazy island in one piece.”

Claire has to laugh at Frank’s stubborn optimism, and it gives her a little hope of her own. They’ll survive this, they have to. She has to get home to Aaron.

Thinking about Aaron, she looks over at Ben. His world seems to be crashing down around his ears and whilst Claire can’t really feel sorry for him after all the pain that he’s caused them, there’s still the overbearing need to know what’s happened to her family, and she might get a bit more out of him in this state.

She moves across and sits beside him.

“We’re back on the island now,” she says. “So will you tell me where Aaron and my mum are, please?”

Ben nods slowly.

“We’ve always had a system of safehouses on the mainland for when we need to leave the island,” he says. “Eloise Hawking oversees the one in Los Angeles. Carole and Aaron were taken there. All being well, they should be back in Sydney by now.” He paused. “I know you probably won’t believe me, but they were in real danger. All three of you were. Charles Widmore has been trying to finish what he started.”

Claire remembers Hurley’s words from the waterfront, that he thought someone had been trying to kill him.

“I believe you,” she says. “Although I’m not ready to forgive you.”

“I understand.”

“Claire!”

Sun is yelling from the water’s edge and speeding along the beach, and Claire gets to her feet, following her. Immediately she sees what’s got Sun so excited.

They’re back. All of them. Jack, Kate, Hurley, even Sayid, Jin and Miles. The only people who are missing whom she thinks should be there, Claire thinks, her heart pounding heavily, are Sawyer and Juliet.

It’s the one of the most heartfelt reunions Claire’s ever known, up there with her own reunion with her mother in Hawaii. Sayid is overwhelmingly happy to see Claire and to learn that Aaron’s all right. Claire finally gets the opportunity to thank Miles for whatever it is that he and Sawyer did in the dead of night that saved her from the island the first time round. Sun and Jin only have eyes for each other, and the others leave them to it for a while, gathering around the campfire.

Finally Claire voices the question that’s been nagging at the back of her mind.

“Where are Sawyer and Juliet?”

Kate shakes her head.

“Juliet… She didn’t make it. James stayed behind to bury her, but I think he needs some time to himself. They were together, back in the past. For three years.”

Claire nods her understanding. As terrible as it is to have lost one of their number, the fact that only one of them has been lost is remarkable.

“So what happens now?” Sayid asks, once they have all fallen into silence again. He’s looking towards Hurley as he speaks, and Claire thinks that leadership looks good on her friend.

Hurley shrugs. “I don’t know. Jacob just said that we needed to come back to the beach and meet up with Claire and Sun. We just have to wait for Sawyer to catch us up, then he’ll appear.”

Ilana shakes her head. “We don’t have time to wait for him,” she says. “Every minute that we spend sitting here is another minute that Locke has to formulate whatever plan he’s trying to formulate. Besides, Jacob’s dead.”

“I know that,” Hurley says levelly. “But that doesn’t mean that he can’t show up.”

“Maybe Ilana’s right,” Jack says. “Maybe someone ought to go and bring James back.”

Kate shakes her head. “He’s grieving, Jack, let him have a couple of hours, at least. Besides, I really don’t think that you’re the first person he’s going to want to see right now.”

Claire doesn’t know what it is that possesses her to speak, but she finds herself saying: “I’ll go.”

She had been the heart of the survivors before. Sawyer had reached out to her when he was trying to re-ingratiate himself. She can reach out to him now that he needs it. Besides, she still hasn’t had chance to thank him for saving her in the jungle three years ago.

“I’ll come with you.”

Claire doesn’t protest as Hurley gets to his feet, and it would be ridiculous to try and go alone. She wants to speak to him anyway; she hasn’t really had chance for a proper talk in the midst of all their adventures, and they make their way through the jungle in the late afternoon sun. They don’t talk for the first couple of miles, but then Claire voices what’s on her mind.

“Why did you come back to the island?” she asks. “What made you change your mind?”

“Well, after I got bailed out of jail, Jacob got in my cab,” Hurley says. “Of course, I didn’t know that it was him at the time, I only worked that out like, this morning. But he told me that it was important that I chose to go back and that everything happens for a reason. It was a bit freaky to be honest, but just before he got out of the cab he told me that you were going back. So, I guessed that if you were coming back then everything would be ok, because you’d make sure that you got back off the island again.” He pauses, looking melancholy. “I found out about Aaron and Carole, and I knew I had to come along to support you. Of course, then we time-travelled and stuff so that didn’t really work out too well, but I’m here now.”

Claire reaches across and takes his hand. “Thanks, Hurley. That means so much.”

“I never got to say hi to Aaron again,” he laments. “Everything happened so quickly.”

“I have pictures on my camera,” Claire says, and she hands it over without another word. Hurley grins as he flicks through the pictures, and occasionally Claire has to warn him about low-hanging branches or twigs on the trail as he gets absorbed.

“He’s amazing, Claire.”

She smiles.

“Yes. He is.”

They fall back into a safe, companionable silence, before Claire needs to speak again. There’s so much that she’s missed over these past few days whilst Hurley and the others have been in the past.

“What happened back in the Seventies?”

Hurley tells her everything. It takes them most of the rest of the trek to the Dharma village, and as Hurley describes it, Claire can almost imagine what it was like in its heyday. He tells her about James smuggling him, Jack and Kate into the Initiative. He tells her about how James, Juliet, Miles, Jin and Sayid had seemed so happy and had had such a comparatively peaceful life, and how he feels guilty that his and the others’ unceremonious arrival shattered that peace. Claire reaches across and takes his hand, giving it a squeeze of reassurance. He tells her about Faraday’s plan to detonate the h-bomb and prevent the Incident, only for them to end up causing the Incident in the first place.

“Closed loop time travel,” Hurley says. “No loose ends, no alternate timelines. Everything that happened, happened. When we set off the bomb, we closed the loop and came back here.”

There’s not much more to be said after that, but Claire enjoys the silent companionship nonetheless. Not for the first time, she wonders why they all had to come back. It seems that all they’ve done since they’ve returned is to inadvertently cause even more pain and heartbreak.

They reach the Dharma village and Hurley points out the house - long since fallen into ruin - that Juliet and Sawyer had shared in the past.

Claire steps up to the door, hanging on its hinges.

“Sawyer?” she calls softly. “James?”

There’s no response, and a quick search of the house shows that he’s not there, but has evidently been there recently. Claire pads through the little building. It’s a carbon copy of the one that she and Kate had shared during their brief time living here, but then again, that’s typical of anything made by Dharma. Flat-pack, mass-produced and functional.

She doesn’t know why she’s looking for clues about James and Juliet’s life here; they haven’t been here since the seventies and other people have lived here since then. There must be something here though, enough for James to want to come back to it. Something that lasted throughout the decades, undisturbed for time passing.

“Do you think that Locke got to him before we did?” Hurley asks. Claire shrugs.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I think he’s probably just wandered off. Maybe he didn’t want to stay here with so many memories.”

Claire and Hurley leave the house and pad through the jungle that surrounds the place. He can’t have gone too far. Not if the empty bottle of Dharma whiskey sitting on the porch is anything to go by.

Out of the corner of her eye, Claire sees someone that she thinks could be Locke, but when she turns, he’s not there. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, a paranoid brain playing tricks on her, but with everything that has happened on this island, she doesn’t think that paranoia is at all unfounded.

“Hey!” Hurley runs off in the opposite direction and Claire follows him; they meet Sawyer a little way on, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a very determined expression on his face. He’s not at all happy to see them.

“Whatever they sent you here to get me to do, Jumbo, I ain’t doing it,” he snarls.

“They didn’t send us,” Claire says. “We came of our own free will.”

He looks a bit surprised to see her; it’s been three years after all and she was a bit out of it with head injuries and almost being kidnapped the last time they met, but despite being thrown by Claire’s appearance, it doesn’t look like he’s going to change his mind.

“I heard about Juliet. I’m sorry,” Claire continues. “We’re all at the old beach camp. It would be great if you came back with us.

He shakes his head.

“Not this time, Claire. Not after it was all for nothing. The greater good didn’t do a whole lot of good, did it?”

He begins to walk away, and Claire holds out a hand to stop Hurley following.

“Leave it. We both know what he’s like. Us following him isn’t going to change his mind.”

“We’ll never find him,” Hurley says.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing,” Claire replies. “He’ll find us in his own time. He knows where we are, and we’re not likely to move. We tried, at least, that’s all anyone can ask.”

The newly-installed sense of calm surprises her. Now that everyone is back in the correct time frame and comparatively unharmed, many of her worries are no longer applicable. Hurley is confident that Jacob will give them the next steps, and Claire has always trusted Hurley to have everyone’s best interests at heart. So she’ll stay with him, and she knows that he will take care of them all.


End file.
